Shahid Ahmad: Getting the Industry so Firmly Behind PlayStation Has Been “Our Biggest Success by Far”

August 12, 2013 Written by Jason Dunning

Shahid Ahmad is synonymous with indie games on PlayStation, having signed Thomas Was Aloneand Luftrausers to name but a few, and breaking away from his constantly updated Twitter account, he was part of an article by Edge, where he discussed PlayStation:

Our biggest success by far has been getting the industry – including press, but particularly the indie community – so firmly behind PlayStation. It gave us extraordinary momentum going into E3. The excitement was palpable. A year ago, I wanted the best version of a game to be on Vita. This year, I’m hearing people say ‘it’s best on Vita’. If anything is a success, it’s that.

Mike Bithell, the creator of Thomas Was Alone, brought a developer’s perspective to indies on PlayStation systems, giving his reasons as to why they’ve been so successful lately in this space:

As a platform holder, they get it. They’re working to strip away the barriers for indies to get on to their system. People think the biggest block to getting onto console is a secret handshake or some coding voodoo, but the biggest challenge is bureaucracy. The strategic development team at Sony seems to get this, and does everything it can to help people like me get our games out.

Bithell was then asked the reason developers choose to work with Sony, when putting their own games on PC by themselves is much easier:

I think indies are moving to Sony’s platforms for one simple reason: because they asked us. It’s that simple, really. Sony has reached out to a ton of developers, and they’ve not stopped announcing new devs coming to their platforms. They also listen to us. The most common question I’m asked on visits to Sony is, ‘What’s cool? What’s about to be awesome?’ They’re checking out half-finished games by unproven devs, and that’s amazing. This proactive approach gives them an edge.

What PS3/PS Vita games do you think are best on Vita? Let us know in the comments below.